


Eager Young Space Cadet

by calrissian18



Series: Mating Games: Round 2 [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, Post Nogitsune, Pre-Slash, Stilinski Family Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-07
Updated: 2014-05-07
Packaged: 2018-01-23 21:37:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1580399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calrissian18/pseuds/calrissian18
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Parrish doesn’t know what Stiles is responsible for, has no idea what his face looks like lit up with mania.  He’s new and easier because of it and Stiles is… he’s using him as a way of not dealing.</p><p>Written for mating_games Bonus Challenge 1: the Sheriff's Desk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eager Young Space Cadet

**Author's Note:**

> So, title because... _Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 Century_ was a fantastic and amazing cartoon and we should all be paying homage to it really, kind of, all the time.
> 
> This is my first Stilish piece - I'm so excited! (Do people even read this by the way??) And my first thing posted for mating_games: Round 2 (also exciting)!

Stiles slouches down in the green vinyl chair, feeling mulish, skin too tight across his bones.  He pushes his foot up against the leg of his dad’s desk, sinks down further and accidentally pushes the whole thing back at least five inches.  It scrapes across the floor, the sound shaving bone off his spine, and the top layer of files falls to the ground.

Stiles huffs, angry with the world, himself and everything in between.  He stands up, stretching his neck, and scoops up all the files that have stayed mostly intact and drops them back on the desk.  To get the rest, he has to flatten his chest on the floor, dig his fingers under the file cabinet where he can just barely graze the edges of a few of the pages that went rogue.

The others are spread out under the desk and chair and are easier to get to.  He’s shuffling it all together when he realizes the file he’s putting back together is the report on Finstock.  The arrow, the medical report, the destruction he caused.  The bread crumbs are spread out and everywhere, readily available to be found.

It’s morbid curiosity that sits him down on the floor, eyes roving through every horrible detail of it.  He hadn’t realized how close it’d been, how high his body count could have potentially climbed, and then he’s pulling down the other files.  The not-bomb on the bus, the real one in the police station, the crimes of William Barrow, the hospital, Kira’s statement.  Fuck,  _Allison_.  It’s all there, spread out for his  _dad_  to pore through.

He feels bile rise in his throat, stomach heaving, reminiscent of the last act of the nogitsune while it was inside him – making him go through the physical torment of retching up  _himself_.  He felt that now, like he was that – left over.

“Hey, kiddo, it shouldn’t be—”

Stiles blinks itch-dry eyes up at his dad.

He frowns hard, almost like he’s disgusted.  “I told McCall to take all that with him when he blew town,” he says roughly.  He rubs his forehead.  “Stiles, come on, get up.”

He stumbles to his feet like he’s never used them before and it’s a phantom reminder of the disorientation and disconnect he’d often felt in his own body while the nogitsune had hold of him.  He really does lose the fight then and throws up all over his own shoes.

* * *

His dad awkwardly taps his fingers against the steering wheel.  “So, pick you up after school, right?”

“I can get a ride.”  He can.  He won’t.  He’d rather walk home than spend an extended period of time in a small, confined space with  _anyone_.

“I know you  _can_ ,” his dad points out, careful in a way they’ve never had to be with each other.  He shrugs.  “I thought you liked getting picked up by your old man.”

Stiles stares down at his knees, picks at a loose thread from the seam on the side of his jeans.  “It’s fine, yeah.  I’ll be here.”  He picks up his backpack and opens the door only to be stopped getting out by his dad’s hand on his shoulder.

“You’re okay, right?”

“Yeah, Dad, I’m fine.”  He isn’t, but saying so isn’t going to make any of this better.

* * *

“Hey, sorry, not the Sheriff but I’ve got his car.”

Stiles squints at the smiling face, handsome and with a sort of self-effacing charm.  Stiles hates him already.  His world’s a mess of overcast and gray and seeing sun like that only reminds him of how dark it’s actually become.  “I can walk.”

“Can,” he agrees brightly.  “Shouldn’t.  Won’t.”  He slaps his palms on the wheel and pops his mouth a little.  “I’ve been tasked with picking you up and delivering you home safely by your father,  _my_   _boss_ , and I’m kind of an overachiever on my worst day.”  He leans across the console and opens the door, pushing it as wide as he can.

Stiles rolls his eyes but throws his bag into the car and thumps down in the seat.

The guy grins.  His nameplate says ‘Deputy Parrish.’  Stiles has seen him a few times around the station and heard his dad talk about him, army brat and motivated as hell, but he hadn’t yet put the face and name together.

When they pull up in his driveway, Parrish turns off the car and smiles in the face of Stiles’ perked, judgmental eyebrow.  He opens the driver’s side door when Stiles opens the passenger’s.  “You don’t have to come in,” Stiles says.  His tone is the equivalent of stamping his feet.

Parrish tips his head and gives him a  _look_. 

Stiles scoffs, mutters to himself, “Right, overachiever,” and stomps inside.  He watches  _Duck Dodgers_  and eats fistfuls of Cheerios out of the box and loses track of Deputy Crew-Cut almost immediately.  He can hear him on the edges of his awareness, bustling about doing something that Stiles couldn’t care less about.  It doesn’t matter who’s in his home as long as he’s the only one in his head.

When he wakes up a few hours later, darkness has crept in.  The lines of the sofa are indented in his cheek and his neck aches from sleeping on the arm of it. 

“Did Parrish make lasagna?”

Stiles smacks his lips, wiping saliva from the corner of his mouth.  He looks up to see his dad curiously eyeing the covered dish in his hand like it might be a bomb.  Stiles rubs at his chest as that thought hits.  He shrugs, looking back.  “Apparently.”

His dad smiles a little, weak.  “You gonna let me eat it?”

Stiles considers doing what he wants to – shrugging, saying he doesn’t care, sinking back into the least relaxing sleep imaginable, but he sees a bit of pleading in his dad’s face and he hates himself for putting it there.  He forces a smirk.  “Not a chance.”

Some of the tension bleeds out of the set of his dad’s shoulders.

* * *

“How’d you like the lasagna?”

Stiles lets out an exasperated sound.  Parrish is stalking him in the cruiser, and has been since Stiles had started walking home when he hadn’t seen his dad in the parking lot.  That unflappable smile is still on his face.

“I threw it to the wolves,” he says with a wry twist to his lips.  He  _had_  given it to Derek after forbidding his dad from it.  He’d gone over to the loft and stood awkwardly across the room from Derek after setting the dish down.  Derek had said, ‘It’s quiet,’ and Stiles knew he meant Isaac even though he hadn’t lived there in months before leaving.  Stiles had put his hands in his pockets, leaned against the kitchen counter and eventually eaten the lasagna straight out of the pan with a fork; Derek standing and doing the same on the other side in companionable silence.

“I get the feeling that’s a joke I’m not meant to get,” he says, not sounding the least bit put out by it.  “Also, I  _will_  follow you all the way home so you might as well accept the ride.”

Stiles keeps walking another half a block before giving up and getting in.

Parrish doesn’t celebrate, just turns on the radio.  Stiles punches it back off.  Parrish arches an eyebrow at him.  “Not an Imagine Dragons fan?”  His mouth pulls to the side.  He taps his thumb against his thigh, sings under his breath, “ _Don’t get too close, it’s dark inside, it’s where my demons hide_.”  It’s almost like a nervous tic. 

He stops when the upholstery of Stiles’ seat squeaks under the unholy grip of Stiles’ fingers.

He stares before cutting his gaze back to the road.  “Wow,  _really_  not a fan,” he says quietly and Stiles isn’t sure if he’s meant to hear it or not.  He wouldn’t comment either way.

He isn’t exactly surprised when Parrish turns off the car in the driveway and follows him up the walk.  He doesn’t contest it, lets Parrish close the door behind them, watches the Looney Tunes with a dead-eyed stare and tries not to think.  Scott calls him twice.  Stiles doesn’t answer, doesn’t know how to talk to a guy he skewered on a katana.

He’s forgotten Parrish was even around until he drops down on the other end of the sofa and says cheerfully, “Were the multitude of expired yogurts some kind of experiment?  Because I  _did_  throw them all away.  You can think of it like your grant money got pulled.”

Stiles wants to ask him how he can sit there and be all right with  _being_.  He’s got to have questions.  He saw the Oni, got one of those smoking, poisonous wounds.  He should be broken or, at the very least, cracked. 

If he is, Stiles can’t see it.

Parrish looks down at the phone between them as it lights up a third time since Stiles has been home.  When Stiles doesn’t make a grab for it, he gives him an uncomfortable smile.  “Are you and your floppy-haired friend fighting then?  Is that what all,” he makes an encompassing gesture, “this is about?”

Stiles stares at him.  “I don’t really want to talk.” 

Parrish nods, not knowing him well enough to know how off that is.  “Silence.  I can do silence,” he says, basically proving the opposite.

* * *

The next day, Parrish sits next to him on the couch and doesn’t speak.  He watches  _Scooby-Doo_  with Stiles in silence, doesn’t wake him up when he falls asleep, and Stiles opens his eyes again to find his dad home, looking a little worn around the edges.

They’re eating dinner in uncomfortable silence, take-out from the Chinese place that delivers in less than ten minutes, when his dad looks up at him, gaze determined, and says, “I don’t know what you’re thinking but if you’re blaming yourself for any of that stuff you saw in the office—” 

“It’s because I  _should_  be,” Stiles finishes angrily. 

“Stiles,” his dad says firmly, expression grave, “none of that was your fault.  You need to understand that.”

Stiles sneers, feeling mean and small.  It’s not unfamiliar.  “People keep saying that,” he spits, “but I  _remember_  doing it.  I know how it feels to—Do you know that I shoved a sword  _through_  Scott and  _twisted_  it?  I’m not innocent.” 

His dad is quiet for a long moment, his chopsticks hanging listlessly above his plate.  He clears his throat and says finally, a ghost of a smile on his face, “I wouldn’t lock you up.” 

Stiles scoffs.  “No, you’d just sic Parrish on me because you don’t trust what I’d do with five minutes to myself.” 

His dad looks like he’s taken a blow.  “You think I don’t trust you?” he asks, trying to catch Stiles’ restless gaze.  He doesn’t speak again until they’re locked in an uneasy staring match.  “Kid.”  He sighs.  “I trust you but that doesn’t mean—Stiles, I’m  _terrified_.” 

Stiles blinks stupidly at him.  It’s one of the last things he ever would have expected his dad to say but he supposes he deserves it, even if it is a sharp pain in his chest.

His dad almost growls.  “Not  _of_  you.  You’re smarter than that.”  He rubs his forehead, sighs louder.  “I’m terrified that if I let you out of my sight for half a second you’re going to disappear again.”  He presses his hand to his mouth and pulls it away again.  “And this time I won’t be able to find you.”

Stiles sucks in a cut of cold air.  He hadn’t even thought about what it must have been like, with him missing  _again_.  His dad must have been—Stiles looks up at him and sees it all over him, still there.  Devastated.  And he clearly thinks there’s a part of Stiles still missing.

His dad shakes his head.  “Aw, hell, I’ll try to—”

Stiles cuts him off quickly.  “No.  It’s fine.”  At his dad’s uncertain stare, he insists, “Really.”

“I could ask Derek if Parrish—” he starts and Stiles waves it off.  Derek’s no better than Parrish and Parrish is no worse than Derek.  It’s a babysitter either way.  His dad puts his elbows up on the table, arms crossed.  “I figure he’s young, you’re young, you might talk to him.  I know he doesn’t know exactly what’s going on but he knows enough to know it’s not normal.  I’m here if you want but I thought it might be easier—” 

Stiles nods.  “We’ll see.”

* * *

He doesn’t talk to Parrish.  And now Parrish doesn’t talk to him.  And his dad has as much peace of mind as Stiles can provide.  It’s the best of a bad situation.  He falls asleep against the arm of the sofa again and wakes up in the dark with Parrish’s face looming over his.

He looks pale and somewhat strained.  “You all right?”

Stiles’ chest is still rising and falling rapidly and the collar and chest of his shirt is soaked through with sweat.  He doesn’t remember the nightmare but it must have been a bad one.  He’s still trying to swallow down air when the truth drives its way out of his mouth.  “Really, really not.”

Parrish’s mouth purses.  “I thought not.  Are you going to tell me?”

Stiles looks up at him.  He’s nice enough but as good as a stranger.  “Probably not,” he says.

Parrish just nods, accepting without judgment.  “Okay.”

* * *

Stiles falls asleep in the car on the way back from school after a sleepless night.  He wakes up with Parrish pulled over on the side of the road, staring at him.  “That was worse than yesterday’s,” he says tightly.  His knuckles are white around the steering wheel.

Stiles grunts, feigning an ease he doesn’t feel.  He sits up and straightens his plaid overshirt.  “Got a free computer.  Only ran Vista.”

Parrish’s lips curve reluctantly and he starts the car again.

Stiles sees Parrish’s hand fall to his hip before he sees the reason for it.  “Scott,” falls out of his mouth as soon as the door is open.  Scott’s standing there, back straight, and he looks like he’s been waiting for at least a half hour.  Stiles has no idea what to add to that exhalation of Scott’s name.  There’s a reason he doesn’t answer the calls.

Scott takes the reins, says simply, “You’re shaking.”

He is.

Parrish steps up to Stiles’ shoulder, says softly, “I’ll be in the kitchen.”

Scott doesn’t even take notice of him and Stiles points up the stairs.  He’d known this was coming, he still isn’t prepared for it.

* * *

“So, that business with your friend, all better?” Parrish asks uncertainly when he drives Stiles home the next afternoon.

Stiles snorts.  “That’s not even an option anymore.  Settled, I guess.  As much as it can be.”

Parrish frowns, bites the inside of his cheek.  After a while, he nods, like that answer wasn’t unexpected.  “It doesn’t seem to have helped much.”

Stiles opens his mouth to say something cutting when he realizes what the words mean.  Parrish hasn’t been immune to his moods.  Instead he’s somehow become someone who cares about improving them.  “I’m kind of hungry,” Stiles says, swallowing down the insult.

Parrish beams at him.  He drives five minutes outside of town and they pull into a tiny diner parking lot.  Stiles lets Parrish order for him.  He starts them both off with a specialty milkshake that tastes like heaven and then a brunch platter with portions the size of Stiles’ whole torso.

The apples of Parrish’s cheeks tint red.  “I might’ve grown up in the Midwest and I might have been, maybe, a pudgy little kid once upon a time.”

Stiles barks out a laugh.  It’s an ugly sound, sudden as it was, but genuine and Parrish seems to like it well enough.  “I’m picturing it.  Glasses, crew-cut, swollen little arms like you’ve been bitten by a snake, fat fingers clutched around a metal Captain Planet lunchbox and your first name is definitely… Darwin.”

Parrish snorts.  “Darwin, wow, thank you for that.  I had the lunchbox though.  I did.  Captain Planet, he’s our hero.” 

“Gonna take pollution down to zero.  I’ve heard the propaganda too, you know?”  Stiles realizes he’s grinning at him.  It feels odd stretched across his face, like the corners of his mouth are being pulled up by a thread, but he feels lighter than he has in weeks.

* * *

Stiles realizes he’s kind of hiding out with Parrish.  Parrish doesn’t know what Stiles is responsible for, has no idea what his face looks like lit up with mania.  He’s new and easier because of it and Stiles is… he’s using him as a way of not dealing.  But none of that negates the fact that it’s nice, being with him.  It is.

The realization, though, does mean he needs to try harder with the people already in his life.

He sits with Kira and Scott and Lydia at lunch.  He doesn’t talk but he’s there and he sees the way they all settle some when he slides in.  The second after his dad steps through the door that night, tired and worn, Stiles wraps him in a hug.  Neither one of them let go for a good long while.  Before he falls asleep, he texts Derek that his window is open and leaves it at that.

It’s not fixed.  Not by a long shot.  But he’s made it known that he wants it to be.

* * *

He can’t pretend he isn’t surprised when he walks down the steps of the school the next afternoon and sees Parrish and the cruiser there, waiting for him.  He doesn’t talk, all knotted up inside, until he and Parrish are sitting on the sofa together,  _Tom and Jerry_  a low hum in the background.

He fists his hands on the knees of his jeans and forces out, “I thought—Listen, if my dad still needs you to be here then I—” Stiles swallows, “I think I need to deal with him rather than have you here as some sort of babysitter, especially since you probably feel obligated to—”

“Your dad doesn’t know I’m here,” Parrish cuts him off, eyes wide with surprise and daring.  “He only asked me to pick you up that first day.”

All the air sucks out of Stiles’ lungs.  “Oh,” he chokes out.

Parrish nods slowly, repeats back blankly, “Oh.”

Stiles clenches his fingers into his jeans harder.  He’s barely… he’s not even  _together_.  His entire life is spread out and threaded together as loosely as possible and he can’t add someone else’s happiness to trying to figure out his own.  “I’m not—I—”

“I know,” Parrish says quickly.  “I don’t—that was—I’m a friend first,” he says firmly, genuinely.

A slow smile spreads across Stiles’ cheeks and he says softly, “Darwin, you want to come over, watch old school cartoons, and maybe not-talk some tomorrow?”  It’s what friends do,  _invite_  each other over.  He hopes Parrish gets it. 

The blinding smile on his face says he does.  He brushes his hand against Stiles’ forearm and says, “Yeah, I’d like that.”

**Author's Note:**

> I have a [tumblr](http://wellhalesbells.tumblr.com/). It's full of _amazing_.


End file.
